Use More Exclamation Points in Your E-mail!!!1111!!!

Slate has an interesting article up today on the subject of whether we use too many exclamation marks in our e-communication.

To briefly summarize the point of the story, Strunk and White would be shocked at the number of exclamation points we use in our e-mails and text messages nowadays.

"To risk sounding like an old schoolmarm: If everything is emphasized, nothing is. Pedestrian e-mails "kicked up a notch" or juiced up on bangers simply contribute to the noise."

Writer Jacob Rubin makes some valid points, but misses a crucial one. There's a tremendous level of snark, irony, and sarcasm in modern conversation, which can be easily conveyed in spoken word but takes some finesse to pull off in an e-mail or IM. I actually remember an article (I think it may have even been on Slate)(found it) arguing that we need some kind of sarcasm punctuation (or maybe an emoticon?), so IM chatters and e-mailers can indicate when they're being snarky or ironic.
I'm still waiting for a sarcasmcon to catch on that I can use while IM-ing, but in the meantime, the exclamation mark has kind of come to be the opposite of that: a punctuation mark that lets a sometimes sarcastic writer express genuine enthusiasm.

For example, let's say my friend Whitney e-mails me a URL to a funny Web site, and I respond with "Wow, that was really amazing."

That response could mean several things, none of which is that I thought the Web site was amazing. Let's say I respond with "That was amazing!!!!111!!!" Again, there's something snarky going on here. The best and clearest way to let Whitney know that I enthusiastically appreciated the site is to reply with "That was amazing!"

Like any other punctuation, exclamation marks change the meaning of the sentence. They can certainly be overused, making you sound like some overenthusiastic teenager, but proper use of exclamation marks is a perfect way to convey your sarcasm or lack thereof.

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